She woke beneath the leaning rocks beside a small lake, with sand stuck to her pale forearm. Her long blond hair lay across the water, and in its reflection her face looked back without recognition.

She struck the lake with her open hand, watched the ripples cross her reflected face, and left the wet fingers hanging at her side.

Water slid from her fingers onto the sand, darkening it briefly, and a thin blue mark showed on the inside of her wrist where the grit had washed away. From the cave, something hard clicked once against stone.

She turned around, brimming with curiosity.

Inside the shade, beneath a shelf of stone, a flat black disk lay half-buried in sand; its edge gave one dry click and showed the same thin blue line as her wrist. The disk trembled once against the rock.

She picked up the disk and it started glowing blue. She brought it outside the cave and pondered what she should do with it as she was thinking a dark small shape took form on top of the desk. It’s moved as it spoke. “ you must walk past the tree towards the sun into the sand little one.” it said.” have faith.”

The dark shape on the glowing disk lifted one narrow arm toward the lone tree, but the blue line at her wrist began to sting in the opposite direction, toward the lake. Behind the rocks, sand rasped softly as though something heavy were dragging itself nearer.

She took one step toward the tree, but the blue mark pulled her wrist toward the lake, and she stayed as the dragging grew louder.

She stayed between the tree and the lake as a furrow pushed through the sand behind the rocks, straight toward the cave mouth. The dark shape on the disk tapped its narrow arm against the blue glow and said, “Go to the sun now,” while her marked wrist burned harder toward the water.

She lowered the disk toward the lake, and in its blue light the sand furrow stopped beside her bare heel.

The furrow stopped beside her bare heel, and a wet black tip, jointed like a root, pressed once through the sand before going still. Across the lake, the disk’s blue light drew a thin line over the water to a pale stone beneath its surface.

She stepped into the lake, and the water closed around her ankle so quietly that the pale stone seemed to be listening.

The blue mark on her wrist brightened under the water, making the pale stone visible between wavering reeds of light; at her heel, the wet black jointed tip made one small sucking sound in the sand. On the disk, the dark shape flattened itself and scraped toward the rim.

She bent beneath the water and touched the pale stone, which was warm as a kitchen egg and pulsed once beneath her finger.

Under her fingertip, the pale stone answered with a second pulse, and a narrow blue seam appeared along its side, matching the mark on her wrist. The dark shape scraped harder at the disk’s rim as the seam began to open.

The seam opened, and within the pale stone she glimpsed a cyclopean sky whose stars were watching her from beneath the lake.

Within that impossible sky, three blue stars altered their positions until they made the shape of the lone tree, the lake, and the sheltering rocks above her. The black thing on the disk battered the rim with a thin metallic clicking.

Beneath the three stars, letters formed in the impossible sky, spelling her name in a script no living hand had learned.

The letters spelling her name gave off no sound, yet the blue seam in the pale stone widened by the breadth of a fingernail. At the same instant, the disk’s rim split with a dry snap, and a hair-thin black filament pressed through the crack toward the water.

In the widening seam, she saw the oasis from above, and beneath its sand a vast closed eye turned toward her.

As the vast eye turned beneath the sand, the three blue stars in the stone rearranged themselves into her wrist-mark, then pointed not toward the sun but downward through the lakebed. The black filament reached the water and made its surface pucker in a ring around the pale stone.

She pressed her marked wrist to the seam, and the lakebed opened beneath her with a glimpse of her own hands sealing the eye.

The vision of her hands did not fade; one pale palm in it bore the same blue mark, pressed against a lid of sand while the great eye beneath rolled beneath her fingers. Below her in the real lakebed, a narrow black opening unfolded between the stones, and from its depth came three slow knocks.

Then she woke again. What a strange dream this had been.

She woke again beneath the cave's shade, but the black disk lay warm in her palm and a wet blue mark shone at her wrist. From somewhere under the sand beyond the rocks came three slow knocks.

And suddenly the sky went dark and a whirlpool opened in the lake and out of it came the horror

The whirlpool flung white foam against the pale stone, and from its revolving black center rose a glossy limb bearing a blue seam like the mark upon her wrist. The warm disk in her palm gave a sharp metallic click, while the three knocks sounded again—not beneath the sand now, but from within the lake.

And suddenly she felt at peace. Suddenly she looked at that hand and realized it was something she remembered something she knew it was Cthulhu. She gave herself up to him and accepted oblivion.

At her surrender, the glossy limb folded over her with the sound of soaked silk, and the black whirlpool drew her pale form beneath without a ripple. When the water stilled, the disk remained on the shore, its cracked face showing one blue word: OPEN.